“See you uptown.” As the wind picked up again, Rousseau stepped back from the gunwale, gesturing the taxi driver onward. Behind me, Jandi was naming his dead denmates for Breakers, saying what had been special about each. She bent close, listening. She understood about loss.

Daniel coiled an arm around my shoulders. “Let’s get her started.”

I turned toward the stern. But the tall tiller had been lifted from its housing and locked into a pair of storage cleats on the transom. Freed up, the rudder wobbled loosely. “Huh?”

“This way.” That smug little smile again. He waved to Breakers as he led me into the cabin. “Cast us off when you hear the engine rev.”

“Aye, aye, sir!” She parodied a salute.

So, Melville still had secrets to reveal. In the forward cabin, we found Jenn awake and struggling to decode the workings of the ship-to-shore.

“Won’t get much response in this neighborhood,” Daniel explained. “All the on-shore stations are down. Maybe when we’re farther north, close to the Mainland.”

Jenn’s clever hands see-sawed in mid-air. No screen, no keypad. Just a bank of toggles and dials. But for all her gestures of confusion, she was clearly in control of herself again. “This is, like, the dark ages!”

Daniel laughed. “All the more reliable for its simplicity. But you need a living presence at both ends and line-of-sight transmission. Marine band. Heard of it? It’s like CB, only VHF.” He showed her how to send. “It’d be good to set up our own station at the Stadium, to keep track of our boats out on the water.”

Jenn wagged her head, like he was talking about unicorns. “What’s the range?”

“About five nautical miles. With the internet collapsing and the satellites crapping out, it’ll be our best bet for near-distance com.”

“Collapsing? Not everywhere . . .”

Daniel’s brow creased. “Pretty much. As a global system. According to my intel.”

Her eyes went startle-round. “But how can that be?”

“Well, maybe not across Europe yet.”

She stared at him a moment, then swiveled back to the com as if seeing it in a new light. “You have the equipment for a station?”

“Not on me. But I’ll find it somewhere. When I do, you’ll be in charge of it.”

He drew me to the far side of the cabin and unlatched a door. What I’d taken for a floor-to-ceiling storage closet revealed a narrow set of steps leading to a tiny cockpit hiding under the forward section of roof. You’d never have thought to look for it. A smoked-glass window, shaped to fit the starboard half of the roof, looked over the bow. There was a single pilot’s swivel chair, a full control panel, and just enough room for me to tuck in beside him, life jacket and all. Cramped, stuffy, but dry and out of the ripping wind.